Five Things Cavil Cherished About Killing Shelley Godfrey, by trovia
Title: Five Things Cavil Cherished About Killing Shelley Godfrey
Summary: Galactica reminds him of the basestar he grew up on.
remix author: trovia
Characters: John Cavil, Shelley Godfrey, Ellen Tigh
Pairings: none
Rating: R
Warnings: icky violence, sadism (not the sexy kind)
Title, Author, and Original URL: Fidelity by grey-sw
Beta Thanks: Thank you very much, millari!
Author Notes: I’m cheerfully ignoring The Plan, because the original story was Jossed by the movie. Personally, I like Grey’s version better than RDM’s anyway, since it leaves more room for me to add gory details. Also it makes more sense, but I guess that’s a given. Hope you like this, Grey!
Five Things Cavil Cherished About Killing Shelley Godfrey
1.
It’s hard to get good entertainment on a battlestar. While the pilots’ gloomy faces, and the spirit of determination and gravity tend to make John laugh, it’s still easy to get caught up in it. And it plays hell on his mood.
Galactica reminds him of the basestar he grew up on. He dislikes admitting that, and it took him long enough to figure out how that is, because Galactica and the basestars are nothing alike. He loves the basestars, admires them even- their smoothness, their precision, their well-oiled perfection. The Galactica, on the other hand, keeps trembling with age and porousness under his feet- much like the muscle and bone under his skin. He feels like one good kick from the right angle, and it’d just fall apart.
But he’s walked past one of his fathers today in the hallway, and just for the remainder of a glimpse, it had felt like he was home again,
“… and somebody get the brat out of my way. I don’t have frakking time for this.”
“Saul. He’s your son…”
“He’s a frakking menace, is what he is. He looks like an adult, he should very well behave like an adult.”
“Don’t mind him, John, he’s just grumpy today. How about you go search for Daniel for me? Mommy needs to talk to Daniel…”
surrounded by them all. Long days filled by playing catch with the Centurions, by learning how to use his old man’s limbs, and growing more aware everyday that Sam would turn his head away in pity when John asked him for help in finding new pants, because accidents happened. It’s
painful
boring living on Galactica and on a basestar, that’s what it is. The expectation of a distraction fills him with giddiness and boyish greed so silly that it makes him snicker, shake his head.
This morning, he wakes up with his heart pounding loudly and an erection harder than human sex could ever hope to cause. Listening to the faint noises of a slow shift, John muses about aging ships and how the best thing about them is their waste disposal system, of all things, and about dogs, and a smile creeps on his face.
2.
Galactica’s trash chutes are ingenious, he has to grant the humans that. Bag-sized slots are embedded in the walls in unobtrusive places, leading through the chutes all the way down to the bottom of the ship, located just before the sweet spot where the gravity stops working- the ship’s version of “all the way down”. Every third shift at two hundred, a hatch opens and it all goes shoop, right out into space. Not a single human is involved in the process, powerful vacuum mechanisms automatically pulling any remaining pieces through the system if something gets stuck.
If the war was fought by machines like those instead of humans, John doubts that his side would stand a chance. Then again, if machines were in place instead of humans, the war would never have started in the first place.
Admittedly, there’d be no fun in that.
He’s always enjoyed an organizational challenge, and it fills him with glee to use the system for his means. Nobody ever uses the aft auxiliary head on this shift, and it’s an indisputable fact that nobody ever thinks to bug the bathroom.
When the hatch opens carefully and Shelley Godfrey steps in, letting it slide shut silently and locking it behind her, she’s late. John is hardly surprised. The seven models could have been like that disposal system, like a seamless, brimming instrument, but they aren’t. Good thing that he planned for that eventuality- there will be all the time in the world, lateness or not. Good thing he already took care of the most ineffective one of the models, too. If a Seven had been placed in this position instead of a Six, he wouldn’t even expect the copy to show up, distracted by something colorful and shiny on the way. The Sevens had been like the Eights in that regard, except much harder to manipulate.
The world goes a little smoother now that they’re gone.
3.
Even this unfashionable version of a Six is so blond and so long-legged that it’s chilling,
like mother,
a shudder running down his spine when she turns to look at him, no matter that he hates the fact that it does. He should look into rewriting his program to make that one go away as soon as he gets off this ship.
It irks him that Godfrey isn’t wearing her glasses.
“I don’t have much time.” She sweeps the room with one efficient glance, apparently deciding it’s safe enough. “They’ve got Marines trailing me. They think I don’t know…”
“Course they do. They’re morons.”
“…and I’d like to keep it that way. The footage is in place; Gaius Baltar is finished with the humans. If you’ve got a plan that’ll get me off this ship tomorrow, let’s hear it. It’ll be hard enough to fool the Marines again.”
“Don’t worry about that. It’s taken care of.” He smirks. “What’d you do, make like you were throwing a ball and then run the other way when they went to fetch it?”
“They're not dogs, brother. It was a little harder than that.” Going by the looks she’s throwing him, she’s not amused.
Catching an involuntary glimpse of himself in the mirror, John notices that he’s smiling again. He gets distracted despite himself, because it’s a strange smile. It makes him look like a boy instead of the shivery old man that he is, although of course,
“Come here, my sweet. Put your head on my lap. I’ll sing you to sleep.”
he’s never been a boy.
“I had a dog once,” he hears himself say. “On Picon, when I was pretending to be a priest. You wouldn't know it from looking at them, but dogs are higher creatures than humans, actually. They understand loyalty, fidelity, obedience... you'd almost think they were mechanical in nature. They're soft, too, softer than Raiders. Nice to pet."
He never gets to talk to anyone anymore, that’s the problem. He isn’t tainted like the other Cylons on this ship with their fake personalities and their fake human trades, he’s still pure and it’s hard to never say, “I am a Cylon” or “I’m going to kill you all, anyway.” If his parents weren’t so damn slow at learning, he thinks remorsefully, he wouldn’t have to go through all this. If they’d caught on to their lesson already, he wouldn’t have to do this for them. He could
wait for them to hug him hello
go home.
Now, at least, he has somebody to talk to, because it’s not that it matters if he does. Shelley Godfrey won’t be telling anybody anything anymore, and that makes her a perfect sounding board to help and keep his brain cells in practice.
So when she glances at the sealed hatch, saying, “Just tell me the plan,” he just ignores her and he’s getting into it, too, fascinated by his own thoughts. Before he knows it, he’s gone off on a tangent, forcing her to listen to him talking about dogs, relishing in her impatient squirms. Then, he knocks her out with the barrel of the gun he brought to play it safe.
4.
He’s on a tight schedule here despite the talk, but it’s okay as long as he keeps an eye on the watch. Nobody will interrupt them at this time. Somebody might hear her scream, but that’s why he opted for choking her. It’s as good a death as any, and he likes the feeling of her life seeping out of her by hands that never feel like his, because he’s never been as old as them. He has a thing for suffocation. Always has had one, ever since the time he used to have night sweats and dreams about being born, greedily trying to breathe air he shouldn’t have to need.
She’s outspread on the ground and he has waited long enough for her to regain consciousness, long enough to realize what’s going on. He doesn’t want her to struggle, but she better be aware. She knows as well as he does that there’s no Resurrection Ship close by, and what would be the point of doing this if there was, anyway?
Her eyes are bulging with terror and her perfect skin is flushing, crimson followed by bruised purple, and he can’t hear one of her heels frantically clicking against the ground where her leg is twitching in spasms. No screams after all, looks like, it’s the only sound she’s able to make.
John is breathing hard although he doesn’t have to, his cock heavy and hard as a stick between the two of them, a pain mostly ignored but welcome nonetheless. He’s
thinking of the time his parents suffocated, all of them at once. And oh, he’s
never felt so powerful. The face underneath him has transformed into a lump of swollen skin and eyes full of water and panic, perfect blond hair still in perfect shape, and there’s no way of telling now that she’s a Six.
She goes limp all at once, and his shaking old hands stay locked around her throat, anyway, steady, for a long moment afterwards. His breath is calming down only slowly, and the most relieving sense of
freedom
joy is rushing through him, just for some moments but sweet as honey still.
It’s in moments like this that he remembers why he wants to be more like a machine. Because it’s as good a way as any to feel like a god.
5.
The one big issue with the waste disposal system is that a Six isn’t slot-sized. Though of course, John could have used the waste disposal units down in the galley or in one of the cleaning staff’s closets instead. He prefers this. There’s nothing better than good, honest work with your hands, even for an old man, at least on a battlestar where there’s nothing else to do. Besides, there’s always the thrill of knowing he could take too long, he could have misplanned, he could be found out- the faint hope of having an excuse to do it again to somebody else.
There’s no difference whatsoever between a dead human and a dead Cylon, both just bags of water and bones- as far as John knows, although honestly he doesn’t have a lot of practice with the humans, never having cared to try. Anyway, they bleed a lot, but he has taken measures in advance, slicing her apart in a shower stall and thinking to slip out of his pants, and putting every part in a bag before cleaning it all up. It’s not a big deal as long as you don’t let it dry. He hums a lullaby meanwhile.
The head he throws away last. Before he does so, he grabs it at the shock of disheveled blond hair sticking out of the bag, and raises it up to his face. The eyes are still wide open, blood vessels popped all over them, a crazed pattern underlining frozen terror. “Night, Mom,” he says, loud and clear. Then he’s flinching, and grimacing when turning away from the slot because old man’s pain is shooting through his back again. He can hear the head banging against the walls of the chute a couple of times before landing on the ground with a very faint thud.
He meets an officer on his way out, just unlocking the head’s hatch in time.
“Gods be with you,” he says with a friendly smile and the officer mutters it back without looking at him, tired face telling of double shifts at war times and a longing for sleep.
Summary: Galactica reminds him of the basestar he grew up on.
remix author: trovia
Characters: John Cavil, Shelley Godfrey, Ellen Tigh
Pairings: none
Rating: R
Warnings: icky violence, sadism (not the sexy kind)
Title, Author, and Original URL: Fidelity by grey-sw
Beta Thanks: Thank you very much, millari!
Author Notes: I’m cheerfully ignoring The Plan, because the original story was Jossed by the movie. Personally, I like Grey’s version better than RDM’s anyway, since it leaves more room for me to add gory details. Also it makes more sense, but I guess that’s a given. Hope you like this, Grey!
Five Things Cavil Cherished About Killing Shelley Godfrey
1.
It’s hard to get good entertainment on a battlestar. While the pilots’ gloomy faces, and the spirit of determination and gravity tend to make John laugh, it’s still easy to get caught up in it. And it plays hell on his mood.
Galactica reminds him of the basestar he grew up on. He dislikes admitting that, and it took him long enough to figure out how that is, because Galactica and the basestars are nothing alike. He loves the basestars, admires them even- their smoothness, their precision, their well-oiled perfection. The Galactica, on the other hand, keeps trembling with age and porousness under his feet- much like the muscle and bone under his skin. He feels like one good kick from the right angle, and it’d just fall apart.
But he’s walked past one of his fathers today in the hallway, and just for the remainder of a glimpse, it had felt like he was home again,
“… and somebody get the brat out of my way. I don’t have frakking time for this.”
“Saul. He’s your son…”
“He’s a frakking menace, is what he is. He looks like an adult, he should very well behave like an adult.”
“Don’t mind him, John, he’s just grumpy today. How about you go search for Daniel for me? Mommy needs to talk to Daniel…”
surrounded by them all. Long days filled by playing catch with the Centurions, by learning how to use his old man’s limbs, and growing more aware everyday that Sam would turn his head away in pity when John asked him for help in finding new pants, because accidents happened. It’s
painful
boring living on Galactica and on a basestar, that’s what it is. The expectation of a distraction fills him with giddiness and boyish greed so silly that it makes him snicker, shake his head.
This morning, he wakes up with his heart pounding loudly and an erection harder than human sex could ever hope to cause. Listening to the faint noises of a slow shift, John muses about aging ships and how the best thing about them is their waste disposal system, of all things, and about dogs, and a smile creeps on his face.
2.
Galactica’s trash chutes are ingenious, he has to grant the humans that. Bag-sized slots are embedded in the walls in unobtrusive places, leading through the chutes all the way down to the bottom of the ship, located just before the sweet spot where the gravity stops working- the ship’s version of “all the way down”. Every third shift at two hundred, a hatch opens and it all goes shoop, right out into space. Not a single human is involved in the process, powerful vacuum mechanisms automatically pulling any remaining pieces through the system if something gets stuck.
If the war was fought by machines like those instead of humans, John doubts that his side would stand a chance. Then again, if machines were in place instead of humans, the war would never have started in the first place.
Admittedly, there’d be no fun in that.
He’s always enjoyed an organizational challenge, and it fills him with glee to use the system for his means. Nobody ever uses the aft auxiliary head on this shift, and it’s an indisputable fact that nobody ever thinks to bug the bathroom.
When the hatch opens carefully and Shelley Godfrey steps in, letting it slide shut silently and locking it behind her, she’s late. John is hardly surprised. The seven models could have been like that disposal system, like a seamless, brimming instrument, but they aren’t. Good thing that he planned for that eventuality- there will be all the time in the world, lateness or not. Good thing he already took care of the most ineffective one of the models, too. If a Seven had been placed in this position instead of a Six, he wouldn’t even expect the copy to show up, distracted by something colorful and shiny on the way. The Sevens had been like the Eights in that regard, except much harder to manipulate.
The world goes a little smoother now that they’re gone.
3.
Even this unfashionable version of a Six is so blond and so long-legged that it’s chilling,
like mother,
a shudder running down his spine when she turns to look at him, no matter that he hates the fact that it does. He should look into rewriting his program to make that one go away as soon as he gets off this ship.
It irks him that Godfrey isn’t wearing her glasses.
“I don’t have much time.” She sweeps the room with one efficient glance, apparently deciding it’s safe enough. “They’ve got Marines trailing me. They think I don’t know…”
“Course they do. They’re morons.”
“…and I’d like to keep it that way. The footage is in place; Gaius Baltar is finished with the humans. If you’ve got a plan that’ll get me off this ship tomorrow, let’s hear it. It’ll be hard enough to fool the Marines again.”
“Don’t worry about that. It’s taken care of.” He smirks. “What’d you do, make like you were throwing a ball and then run the other way when they went to fetch it?”
“They're not dogs, brother. It was a little harder than that.” Going by the looks she’s throwing him, she’s not amused.
Catching an involuntary glimpse of himself in the mirror, John notices that he’s smiling again. He gets distracted despite himself, because it’s a strange smile. It makes him look like a boy instead of the shivery old man that he is, although of course,
“Come here, my sweet. Put your head on my lap. I’ll sing you to sleep.”
he’s never been a boy.
“I had a dog once,” he hears himself say. “On Picon, when I was pretending to be a priest. You wouldn't know it from looking at them, but dogs are higher creatures than humans, actually. They understand loyalty, fidelity, obedience... you'd almost think they were mechanical in nature. They're soft, too, softer than Raiders. Nice to pet."
He never gets to talk to anyone anymore, that’s the problem. He isn’t tainted like the other Cylons on this ship with their fake personalities and their fake human trades, he’s still pure and it’s hard to never say, “I am a Cylon” or “I’m going to kill you all, anyway.” If his parents weren’t so damn slow at learning, he thinks remorsefully, he wouldn’t have to go through all this. If they’d caught on to their lesson already, he wouldn’t have to do this for them. He could
wait for them to hug him hello
go home.
Now, at least, he has somebody to talk to, because it’s not that it matters if he does. Shelley Godfrey won’t be telling anybody anything anymore, and that makes her a perfect sounding board to help and keep his brain cells in practice.
So when she glances at the sealed hatch, saying, “Just tell me the plan,” he just ignores her and he’s getting into it, too, fascinated by his own thoughts. Before he knows it, he’s gone off on a tangent, forcing her to listen to him talking about dogs, relishing in her impatient squirms. Then, he knocks her out with the barrel of the gun he brought to play it safe.
4.
He’s on a tight schedule here despite the talk, but it’s okay as long as he keeps an eye on the watch. Nobody will interrupt them at this time. Somebody might hear her scream, but that’s why he opted for choking her. It’s as good a death as any, and he likes the feeling of her life seeping out of her by hands that never feel like his, because he’s never been as old as them. He has a thing for suffocation. Always has had one, ever since the time he used to have night sweats and dreams about being born, greedily trying to breathe air he shouldn’t have to need.
She’s outspread on the ground and he has waited long enough for her to regain consciousness, long enough to realize what’s going on. He doesn’t want her to struggle, but she better be aware. She knows as well as he does that there’s no Resurrection Ship close by, and what would be the point of doing this if there was, anyway?
Her eyes are bulging with terror and her perfect skin is flushing, crimson followed by bruised purple, and he can’t hear one of her heels frantically clicking against the ground where her leg is twitching in spasms. No screams after all, looks like, it’s the only sound she’s able to make.
John is breathing hard although he doesn’t have to, his cock heavy and hard as a stick between the two of them, a pain mostly ignored but welcome nonetheless. He’s
thinking of the time his parents suffocated, all of them at once. And oh, he’s
never felt so powerful. The face underneath him has transformed into a lump of swollen skin and eyes full of water and panic, perfect blond hair still in perfect shape, and there’s no way of telling now that she’s a Six.
She goes limp all at once, and his shaking old hands stay locked around her throat, anyway, steady, for a long moment afterwards. His breath is calming down only slowly, and the most relieving sense of
freedom
joy is rushing through him, just for some moments but sweet as honey still.
It’s in moments like this that he remembers why he wants to be more like a machine. Because it’s as good a way as any to feel like a god.
5.
The one big issue with the waste disposal system is that a Six isn’t slot-sized. Though of course, John could have used the waste disposal units down in the galley or in one of the cleaning staff’s closets instead. He prefers this. There’s nothing better than good, honest work with your hands, even for an old man, at least on a battlestar where there’s nothing else to do. Besides, there’s always the thrill of knowing he could take too long, he could have misplanned, he could be found out- the faint hope of having an excuse to do it again to somebody else.
There’s no difference whatsoever between a dead human and a dead Cylon, both just bags of water and bones- as far as John knows, although honestly he doesn’t have a lot of practice with the humans, never having cared to try. Anyway, they bleed a lot, but he has taken measures in advance, slicing her apart in a shower stall and thinking to slip out of his pants, and putting every part in a bag before cleaning it all up. It’s not a big deal as long as you don’t let it dry. He hums a lullaby meanwhile.
The head he throws away last. Before he does so, he grabs it at the shock of disheveled blond hair sticking out of the bag, and raises it up to his face. The eyes are still wide open, blood vessels popped all over them, a crazed pattern underlining frozen terror. “Night, Mom,” he says, loud and clear. Then he’s flinching, and grimacing when turning away from the slot because old man’s pain is shooting through his back again. He can hear the head banging against the walls of the chute a couple of times before landing on the ground with a very faint thud.
He meets an officer on his way out, just unlocking the head’s hatch in time.
“Gods be with you,” he says with a friendly smile and the officer mutters it back without looking at him, tired face telling of double shifts at war times and a longing for sleep.